One of the questions we get asked all the time is, “Do LED Light Bulbs Really Save You Money?”
If you’re in the architectural stage for designing a new property, you are really excited, and you’re thinking about lighting.
The short answer is: Absolutely. The longer answer is dependent on what are we comparing it to?
It’s important to establish some relevance. Is it less than CFLs or incandescent bulbs and that sort of thing? In this post, we will just scratch the surface of this question.
We can always dive in deeper on another post, or you can start a conversation below in the comments and ask some questions and we’ll always be happy to respond. Feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channel @GoQAV as well to stay current on all of our latest videos!Looking at the government’s energy site, there’s some really specific numbers here that are pretty astonishing. They’re saying in a residential application, that Energy Star rated products, particularly residential LEDs, would use 75% less energy and last 25 times as long compared to incandescent lighting.
The incandescent bulb is basically the bulb that most of us have always grown up with or have had in our houses until compact fluorescents, allergens, and LEDs came about. That is tremendous in terms of efficiency and savings. Something else to point out is regardless of the lighting type that you’re using, there are many ways to make it more efficient.
Using Dimming to Save Even More
Regardless of the lighting type that you use, there’s a lot of other ways to make that lighting more efficient. One of those ways is dimming. As soon as you start dimming a load, you’re just using less energy. Oftentimes, if you go to 90% or 85%, sometimes it’s not even perceivable and you’re saving energy. The light in the room is still really good. Beyond that, if you start dimming much lower, now you’re talking about enhancing ambience in addition to your energy savings. There’s a lot of convenience involved that goes with that.
The Department of Energy has some pretty interesting statistics that are rather mind blowing. They measure energy in quads and one quad is like one quadrillion BTU’s. So, the statistic here that I’d like to point out is the Department of Energy says the LEDs will enable an additional 16 quads of energy savings through 2035. I think there’s no doubt about the energy savings that LEDs bring.
This is the direction that everything’s going. The Department of Energy is saying by 2035, 80%-84% of all lighting installations will lead to 62 quads of cumulative energy savings.
Lighting Control and Smart Home Technology
The other thing this ties into, as is relevant to smart home technology, is lighting control. This means you’re not just dimming a single lighting load, like your kitchen pendants or something like that.
With lighting control, you’re going to create a scene that might be “entertain” or “goodnight”. This is when you tie a whole group of lights together on a single button press that will dim them all down to the desired light level that you want. This is important because we can then start tying in some automation features that will shut off additional energy savings if the room is not occupied.
We’ll take things like occupancy sensors, vacancy sensors, photocells, etc., and we’ll start using all of this information to program in a way that builds off the energy savings that we started with, by choosing LED lighting, for example. Then we will add to that by incorporating lighting control. Now we can make sure that lights are not being left off in rooms, or if the home is just not occupied altogether, then you can also programmatically shut off HVAC and other things for more savings. This becomes an ecosystem that breeds energy savings.
This is a really fun industry to work in and it’s a lot of fun to help people through this process and be a part of something that’s so fun and exciting in terms of energy savings in the future.
So, that was just the short answer to the question, “Do Led Light Bulbs Really Save You Money?” I want to be real direct to the point as far as sharing the importance of LED lighting and why it’s so popular. . Leave some questions, give us some feedback on your thoughts. If you’re planning a project, let us know what you’re doing, what you’re up to.
Are you building? Remodeling? Do you have a residential facility? Commercial facility? Are you part of the design build team, such as an architect, builder, interior designer? We would love to hear from you and see what you’re doing and what kind of lighting you’re using.
Comment over on our youtube channel!